I don't recall a particular order that the events happened, but I do remember what happened and how to tell the stories.First off there is the most remembered story between the crew, which is pulling the fridge out of the ravine on the trash clean up day. The whole crew pitched in to get that thing up the cliff. Several people had trouble navigating the hill to get down to the fridge, but still the fridge was eventually retrieved and put in a truck to go to the dump. On the same day, earlier, me, one of the crew leaders, and a crew member crawled down the hill to pull up the other, now basically forgotten, 'Treasure' of the day, a toilet, complete with beer can inside. And still before that nearly the whole crew had to climb down the hill to the end of culvert, where it looked like people had been dumping the entire contents of their mobile homes off the road. That was a particularly interesting stop, because you have to be very careful not to fall off the edge or have the dirt give way under you.
Second there was the campground maintenance at Seal Rock Campground. We painted picnic tables with a whether proof sealant, and we cleaned out fire pits. The picnic tables was the most fun of the whole season, in my opinion. I ended up working with two other people on the picnic table painting, and they were continually trying to get paint on each other. Even though they were goofing off a little, we got a surprising number of tables done, while still having as much as fun as possible. There were no fatalities from the paint flinging.On one of the days, we were driving up to a work site and the van I was in noticed that the van with the rest of the people in it was not behind us anymore. We backed up until we finally came around the curve in the road and saw the van tipped sideways in the ditch. Everyone was standing around and looking torn between excitement and boredom. After I knew that everyone was fine, I allowed myself to think it was pretty cool. I got some neat pictures of the tilt of the van compared to a person standing. It took almost all day to get a wrecker up to pull the van out of the ditch, and by the time the van was retrieved we had had done several group activities and picked up many rifle shells and clay pigeons from the pull out near where the van was in the ditch. And while it was very cold, we got a lot done. Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of the wrecker pulling the van out of the ditch. That is the only thing I would have wanted more out of that day, would have been taking some pictures and watching the van get pulled out of the ditch.
We also pulled at least ten bags worth of weeds one day, mostly Tanzy Ragwort and a little Herb Robert. That day probably had one of the most beautiful eating stops of the season. We sat by a river, under a huge tree in a little secluded campground. With the sun just perfect in the trees everything glittered.
The challenge was a high point of the season, and while some did not agree that it was a fun team building exercise, I do believe that the crew members who attended were more of a team than the rest of the crew. Several of us invented a weird and sort of surreal story to tie all the of the course elements together. I think what we ended up with was that we had crossed a toxic wasteland and gone temporarily blind from the fumes, had to cross a sea, and finally climbed over a wall into the castle. Or something like that.
We also did trail maintenance on the Notch pass trail, some trail widening, some raking, and brush work.And finally, our last work site was very close to where I live. It was fun to see what was so close to where I lived, and then clean that up so I might later enjoy the campground. Mostly what we did at that campground raking leaves, cleaning fire pits, and clearing the trails to the camp sites.
I was very happy with what I accomplished this season and know that the leadership and other skills I have learned this year will be useful to me later in my life.